I thought of all of this as I lay in the high, damp grass of the churchyard, listening for the sound of pursuers. Tiny insects plied their trades, bustling to and fro like costermongers setting up stall on market day. The smell of earth and meadows reminded me of childhood and I remembered listening to my brothers’ calls as they searched for me one long hot afternoon. I’d watched them from my hiding place, refusing to be found, relishing the power concealment brought. It was a long time since I’d thought of those days and the remembrance added to my unease, for surely every man remembers his beginnings when he is about to die.

I had two reasons for picking this book: 1. The reference to Marlowe (author of Tamburlaine the Great) and 2. that cover.

Other than that I knew nothing about the book when starting this.

As it turns out, this is a novella about the last few days in Christopher Marlowe's life but it is also story of crime, plague, vengeance, betrayal, and a ultimately also a bit of a mystery.

There were a few things that didn't work for me: we're thrown right into the story, without any introduction, and the speed of the story seems to just rush through events.

Now part of the problem I had may have been because this is such a short work. It could have done with more ... story, more time to unfold the story.
However, part of what I liked about it, too, was that it was pacy and seemed to have been told in haste, which makes perfect sense by the end of the book.

In any case, I look forward to reading more by Welsh. I really appreciated her tone and interjection of a somewhat poetic style which, no doubt, was to fit with Marlowe as the narrator. I really want to find out how her writing compares in other books, and whether / how she develops her characters in full-length novels.

Last night I received a summons to a house in Deptford. There I will be held to accounts, which cannot be squared. Life is frail and I may die today. But Tamburlaine knows no fear. My candles are done, the sky glows red and it looks as if the day is drenched in blood. I finish this account and prepare for battle in the sureness that life is the only prize worth having and the knowledge that there are worse fates than damnation. If these are the last words I write, let them be,
A Curse on Man and God. ( )

Crafty, short novella, set in 1593 London during the reign of Elizabeth. The protagonist Christopher Marlowe is a play writer who has been fathering two successful plays (Faust, and Tamburlaine, a tough cookie hero). But Marlowe is in trouble, he has fallen out of grace – after sucking off his protector and master at the Court, Walsingham, Marlowe is summoned to London to face a court ruling. He is accused of various forms of blasphemy in his work. Well there is plenty of that in his works but that can hardly be a reason to indict him now. Something is going on. Soon he happens to crash into one of his close friends who played the main character in Tamburlaine. Slowly the suspicion grows on Marlowe that it is Tamburlaine who aims to kill him. After surviving two attempts on his life, he knives his friend and prepares to meet the commissioners of his assassination in some obscure house (where the historical Marlowe actually got killed with a knife in his eyeball). The sex is sordid, the drinking scenes lively, the pest haunted London streets eerie, the debauched court antics and intrigues realistic. Makes one wanna read more of Welsh. ( )

I liked this brief but compelling tale about the last few days in the life of Christopher Marlowe. ( )

Not much is really known about the circumstances that surround the death of Christopher Marlowe. We know how he died and who he was with at the time, but was it a drunken brawl that ended tragically, was it murder, plotted and planned? Nothing in the history books is conclusive.

Louise Welsh's novella (it's not really long enough to be a fully fledged novel) is based on the last few days of his life and tries to put a voice to him and give background to what happened. It 'kind of works'. You do get a feel for the times and the lives being led, but whether it really fleshes out why he had to die.... I think a more in depth working would be needed for that and I gather there are better novels, and certainly better history books, available that cover the subject.

From what I've read, this is probably the least accomplished of the author's works (& that's why I read it first - I was given signed copies of 3 of her books for my birthday last year and prefer to work 'up' rather than 'down'). I did enjoy it, but am looking forward to reading the other 2 books I have on Mount TBR more.
( )

Death makes the world a brighter place. I've seen the shape danger gives to things, an edge so sharp that if you like your head atop your shoulders and your entrails tucked safe in your belly it's best not to stop and admire the view. Yet the prospect of death renders everything lovely. Colours shine stronger. Strangers' faces fascinate and your sex calls you to business you must not attend.

I enjoyed "Tamburlaine Must Die" while I was reading it as it was well written and felt like an accurate representation of late Elizabethan London, but when I reached the end I felt rather let down. I think it would have worked much better if Louise Welsh had expanded it into a novel, as it didn't have enough excitement or twists and turns. The revelation about who had actually created the Tamburlaine posters left me disappointed. The whole premise of the story didn’t make much sense either. Torturing Thomas Kyd to obtain false evidence against Marlow so that they could blackmail him into betraying someone else seems a rather long-winded way for the Privy Council to go about things.

As for the cover description that "Tamburlaine Must Die is the swashbuckling adventure story of a man who dares to defy both God and State - and discovers that there are worse fates than damnation", I don't think that describes the story well at all. Marlow was an atheist and didn’t believe in God or damnation, so it was the state's laws on blasphemy and homosexuality that he was defying rather than God, and his eventual decision was not made because he was scared of hell, but rather because he was sick of being manipulated by the Privy Council.

And some things never change: He granted me a scholarship to Cambridge University where I was recruited into a strange shadow world, where I was assured I could help my country while helping myself. ( )